


Growing up in Redwing Tent

by rmc28



Category: Sharing Knife - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Childhood, Choices, Family, Gen, Minor Character Death, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmc28/pseuds/rmc28
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sumac from birth to fifteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing up in Redwing Tent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jenn_Calaelen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenn_Calaelen/gifts).



> With grateful thanks to my betas [atreic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/atreic/pseuds/atreic) and [molybdomantic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/molybdomantic/pseuds/molybdomantic).

Sumac is born at the start of a golden summer: her mother's delight, her father's quiet joy, her grandmother's triumph. She feeds and sleeps and grows, a contented baby in a family made vastly more contented by her arrival. Patrol dispatches bring the news to her uncle Dag, out on his long walk around the lake. He smiles to think of her reception, but then gives her little more thought. Her grandmother Cumbia takes care of her at every opportunity, cherishing her long-awaited granddaughter, assisting Omba in every possible way.

If Cumbia silently resents that nursing Sumac is the one thing she cannot do, if Omba is silently slow to wean her daughter, slow to move her out of her own bed, neither woman speaks of it and no-one lets resentment or rebellion touch the baby. Sumac grows up assured of being beloved, because she is.

 

Sumac often plays with her Redwing cousins, children of Cara, oldest daughter of great-aunt Mari. When her younger brother Wyn is ill or especially demanding, sometimes she and older brother Wil stay overnight in Mari's tent, curled up against her for comfort. Mari's youngest Sami seems to enjoy being the oldest child in the family. He wants to join the patrol as soon as he's old enough, but supervising his little cousins, nieces and nephews suits him very well for now.

Shortly after Wyn is weaned, Omba becomes pale and tired for days each month. Papa spends less time knifemaking to sit with her at these times, and the girls who help with the horses take on extra shifts. Sumac worries and goes to Grandmama, who always likes to explain things to her. Grandmama explains about women's monthlies and how they can be painful, for some women more than others. Yes, ground reinforcements can help, just like when Sumac banged her foot so hard that time. That's what Aunt Mari and Grandmama are doing, when they sit with Mama a few times a day. Yes, when Sumac grows just a bit older, she'll be able to sense the ground reinforcements for herself.

Grandmama takes Sumac with her to find cattails for stuffing bleeding pads. Collecting these becomes another of Sumac's chores, a way to help her mama out. Grandmama says that once Mama gets pregnant again, maybe with a baby sister for Sumac, the monthly pains will stop for another three or four years. But it's a long time before Mama gets pregnant again, and she and Papa change the subject whenever Grandmama tries to bring it up. Meanwhile all three children start going to stay with Mari and Cara during Mama's monthlies.

Sumac and Wil are bigger now, too old to curl up with Aunt Mari like they used to, so the family requisitions a spare tent from Stores. Sami teaches Sumac and Wil to put it up, while the adults pretend not to find them adorable. That night Wyn sleeps in with Aunt Mari, but Sumac and Wil lay out their bedrolls alongside Sami in the new tent. They pretend they are patrollers like Uncle Cattagus, or Grandpapa.

 

Sami comes of age, and nearly into his full height. He and Aunt Mari go to training together, as mothers returning to patrol often do. Grandmama seems unhappy about it, for reasons Sumac can't figure out. No-one will explain, except to say "Well, that's your grandmama" in a frustrating way. Mari herself says she's spent over 30 years bringing up children, she's a grandmother several times over, and it's about time she started walking again. By now Sumac is old enough to know that her aunt means walking the patrol.

 

Sumac is twelve, and her groundsense has come in, and her monthlies have started. To her relief and Omba's both, she doesn't suffer much with them. She still collects cattails, now for both of them, and she learns to help Omba more directly with ground reinforcements. Her father has started to talk to her, in small doses and with his usual reserve, about his knifemaking. He begins to teach her small tasks with groundwork, and though he is not an effusive man, he expresses approval of her progress.

Mari and Cattagus are away on patrol when the news comes to Tent Redwing of Sami's death on patrol. Death is not new to Sumac, especially not among patrollers, but she grieves for her tall laughing older cousin. When Mari and Cattagus are given leave and come home, Sumac spends many hours just sitting with her aunt, sometimes crying wordlessly, sometimes sharing memories of Sami. 

Later, her father spends long hours making twin sharing knives from Sami's leg bones. One of them is bonded to Mari, and the other to an elderly aunt Sumac barely knows. Grandmama says very little, but makes a double sheath for the knives, putting her best groundwork into it so it will not break on patrol or in a fight. The elderly aunt shares her fast-approaching death a few months early, so Mari can go back to patrol with that sheath filled. Sumac draws some comfort amid the grieving from these last contributions of Sami to the work of the patrol.

 

Sumac is fourteen and the apple of her grandmother's eye. She is slowly realising how much Cumbia Redwing's expectations surround her, like a fish realising the existence of water. 

Her groundsense seems fully developed, and her father continues to offer quiet encouragement with her learning of groundwork. One quiet evening Dar sits Sumac down and says that when she comes of age on her fifteenth birthday, he is minded to offer her an apprenticeship with him. That it might look like favouritism, but he would not compromise his calling by taking an untalented apprentice. She has the talent and the potential and he is proud of her. He cannot make the formal offer until she is of age, and she must of course make her own choice, but he would like her to think about it.

The offer may not be formally made, but Grandmama and Papa seem sure of what her response will be, and speak accordingly. Her mother says nothing directly, but finds her more tasks to do with the horses. They spend long quiet companiable days together caring for the big comforting animals. Hard physical labour and a focus on simpler animal needs gives Sumac time and space to try to understand herself. Something is growing inside her which she finds hard to name: discontent, rebellion, unhappiness? It lies within her like hidden rocks to trap an unwary boat on the river, and Sumac's birthday is dragging her unstoppably towards it.

Then news comes from the north in close succession. First, that her uncle Dag, long gone walking around the lake, has got stringbound to a woman of the Wolverine clan way up in Luthlia. Grandmama is especially bad-tempered in the month or two after that, and especially attentive to her plans for Sumac's future. 

Second, the terrible series of malice outbreaks that will eventually come to be known as the Wolf War. Hickory Lake sends what patrollers and help it can spare. No-one envies the patrol captain, trying to strike the balance between stopping the malice in the north, and keeping defences up against a malice outbreak here.

Third, the hard-won victory of Wolf Ridge, heroically commanded by Dag, but leaving him widowed and terribly injured. Grandmama is unbearable and Dar's reserve solidifies into silence. Sumac and Omba find every possible task to keep them with the horses.

Finally, months after Wolf Ridge, her one-handed uncle arrives back at Hickory Lake. Around his neck he carries a bonded knife made from his dead wife's bone, and he greets adulation and sympathy alike with furious silence. His ground is tightly furled, but his body language conveys unhappiness, desperation and self-loathing well-enough. The patrollers who came to Hickory Lake with him are full of praise for his actions at Wolf Ridge, and willing to share the songs that have already been made about the Wolf War. Sumac listens avidly to both stories and song, but Dag refuses to. He can hardly be coaxed to join any gathering of people and any mention of Luthlia is a sure way to ensure he leaves.

Grandmama alternates fussing over Dag's injuries and how he will ever get stringbound again with lengthy commentary on the safety (and importance) of knifemaking. Dag very quickly goes to stay with Mari and Cara, using the same spare tent spot that Sumac, Wil and Sami used years ago. He spends hours sitting there alone, sunk in his own misery, unless someone finds a reason for him to leave. It's Omba that finds him reasons more often than anyone else, pointing out his groundsense still works and horses still listen to him, and there's no lack of work for even a one-handed worker on Mare Island. 

Sumac tries to reconcile this grimly silent man with the hero of the songs and comes to no quick answer. She sees how Grandmama and Papa treat Dag, a mixture of pride in his famous victory and no tolerance for his injury and sadness. She begins to see very clearly what it is like to disappoint them. But when she comes of age and has to choose her calling, Sumac chooses the patrol.


End file.
